by cerebral palsy, but the
condition hasn’t slowed
her prodigious mind;

Melody is a genius, as her
parents have always suspected and her fifth-grade
classmates and teachers
are about to find out.

Johnson capturesMelody’s frustration whenshe cannot communicate, her elationwhen technological advances finally allowher to, and her sadness when others stillregard her with fear or suspicion. Johnsonalso voices the novel’s other characterswith wisdom and compassion, includingMelody’s parents and the tough-as-nailsneighbor who pushes the girl to excel.

Older children and their parents will
enjoy the way Johnson brings life to this
unforgettable character. Ages 10–up. An
Atheneum paperback. (Aug.)

Spontaneous

Actress McKenna creates high drama in
her reading of Starmer’s YA novel about a
string of spontaneous combusting teenagers at a high school in New Jersey.

Members of the Covington High School
senior class keep exploding, and no one is
sure why. Protagonist Mara Carlyle witnesses the first explosion in her precalc
class. She and her friends want to figure
out what’s going on, but that’s hard to do
when FBI agents and other government
agents become a part of everyday life and
everyone else is deathly afraid of being
contaminated. In the audio edition,
McKenna’s deep and throaty voice draws
in the listener hypnotically, while her
emphasis and emotional expression captures the firsthand account of Mara as she
witnesses many of her friends burst.

Beyond the aural appeal of her voice,
McKenna captures the tone, rhythm, and
attitude of the different teenagers present
throughout the story, giving each character vocal identities that only rarely skirt
the edge of caricature. She’s at her best
when the story goes deep into Mara’s
thoughts to see the genuine (and not
always kind) side of this protagonist. Ages
14–up. A Dutton hardcover. (Aug.)

Daymond also works hard
to create distinct voices for
the large cast of secondary
characters—some of which
are on the verge of
sounding slapstick. A Dial
hardcover. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)

Furthermore

Tahereh Mafi, read by Bronson Pinchot.

Listening Library, unabridged, 7 CDs, 8 hrs.,

$45 ISBN 978-0-451-48604-2

In the land of Ferenwood, color is
everything, and all the residents are
brightly hued, except 12-year-old Alice
Alexis Queensmeadow, who is devoid of
color and feels like an outcast. To make
matters worse, Alice’s father went missing
three years ago, and she misses him terribly. When Oliver, a boy who made fun
of Alice when she was younger, unexpectedly tells her he knows where her father is,
she is skeptical but follows him to the
land of Furthermore, where the rules of
magic are entirely different, everything is
illogical and topsy-turvy, and danger
lurks around every corner. Voice actor
Pinchot is a natural storyteller, and his
reading of Mafi’s middle grade fantasy is
utterly delightful: his voice is lively,
engaging, and whimsical, especially when
tossing off the many first-person conversational asides of the story’s unnamed narrator (“She needed Alice to find the feren-berries—I’ll explain why later”; “We are
coming upon the last bit of our story
now... and I’m feeling bittersweet about
it.”) This imaginative tale is even more
fun and magical in the voice of Pinchot.

Ages 9–12. A Dutton hardcover. (Sept.)

★ Out of My Mind

Sharon M. Draper, read by Sisi Aisha Johnson.

S&S Audio, unabridged, 6 CDs, 7 hrs., $29.99

ISBN 978-1-5082-2941-4

This long-overdue audio narration ofDraper’s 2010 middle grade novel is abreakout performance for voice actressJohnson, who skillfully brings togetherchildlike sensitivity and grown-upgravitas as she gives life to Draper’s char-acter Melody Brooks. Confined to awheelchair, Melody is physically trappedmuch inflection and energy. In other sec-tions, and particularly those with dia-logue, her voice becomes lively withemphasis and emotion. Her most impres-sive feat in narrating comes with her seam-less shifts into French accents and evenFrench itself as she moves through conver-sations in her mother’s native tongue. ARiverhead hardcover. (Aug.)

Morey sounds too earnest and boyish to
be the voice of Norman Mailer, but he has
a masterly grasp of Mailer’s rhythms and
long, staccato sentences stuffed with similes and metaphors. Thus the listener can
easily grasp the meaning of Mailer’s provocative 1960s New Journalism. Morey
manages to express the intensity of
Mailer’s visions and views of “the journalist” (as Mailer calls himself in the
book). It’s fun to think what Mailer would
be writing about the 2016 election, and
enlightening and entertaining to share his
experience of the turmoil and violence
that encompassed the 1968 Democratic
National Convention in Chicago. A
Random House paperback. (July)

Children’s/YA

Thieving Weasels

Raised by a family of crooks who were
always looking to cheat the system, Skip
O’Rourke ran away from home four years
ago to attend boarding school under the
alias Cameron Smith, hoping to permanently rid himself of his past. In his senior
year, he receives an acceptance letter from
Princeton University, but his uncle—the
conniving patriarch of the family—tracks
him down to coerce him into a supposed
final heist with a large payoff. Reader
Daymond vocally conveys the dual nature
of the story’s protagonist, using different
tones of voice for when Smith is conversing with his boarding school friends
and when he is dealing his family.
Daymond performs these transitions
impeccably, and equally important, he